Scars: Their Stories
by Someone aka Me
Summary: Scars tell a lot about people, Charlie knows. Everybody has scars, and every scar has a story. Post War A-Z vignettes on various characters, through Charlie's eyes. A: Katie; B: Draco C: Dennis D: Luna
1. A - Aftermath (Katie)

Scars: Their Stories

.

This story is dedicated to MandyinKC, for giving me the idea in a lovely review she left on my story, _Scars_. This is very loosely based on that story, though they both stand alone. Basically, this takes the following lines from that fic and builds it into what I hope will be a post-war character study sort of thing with a lot of different characters featured through Charlie's eyes.

.

"_Scars have always been the first thing Charlie notices about people – because scars can tell a lot about a person. Depending on how many there are, where they are, and what kind they are, Charlie can get a pretty decent reading on a person before the first word out of his or her mouth."_

.

It is also for the Alphabet Challenge on HPFC - drabbles A-Z. Some prompts are from the challenge, and some are my own.

.

A is also for HedwigBlack's Weekly Challenge, which is Weasley Appreciation this week.

.

Updates will be sporadic at best, just so you're aware.

.

I apologize for the ridiculous length of this author's note.

.

A - Aftermath.

Charlie takes in a deep breath and finally allows himself to collapse against the wall. He stares out into the Great Hall, still filled with too many lives cut short.

He cannot cry. Not right now, anyway. He's certain that he will later, when it all truly sinks in, but for now he is just vacant. Relieved, though he hates to admit it. It''s over. It's done.

Now they just have to live with the aftermath.

Charlie drops his head against the wall behind him, sighing. _How is it fair that one madman could cause so much destruction?_ he wonders. And Charlie knows full well that he hasn't even seen all of it. He spent much of the war still cocooned in Romania, with his dragons.

It doesn't matter how much he tells himself that the rest of the world couldn't just stop for the war. Charlie knows that the Reserve would have kept going without him. He knows that he should have been here, _home_, when they needed him.

He knows that he will have to carry that guilt for a long time.

Katie Bell sinks down against the wall beside him. "Horrible, isn't it?" she asks, and Charlie can tell that she doesn't need an answer. Still, he nods bleakly.

She turns toward him, and _Merlin, her eyes are haunted._

"You all right, Char?" she asks him, his old nickname rolling easily off her lips despite the fact that he hasn't seen him in years.

And Charlie refuses to lie and say yes. "I will be."

She nods, and as she does, her brown hair swirls and Charlie catches sight of a mark.

Without thinking, because it's just Katie, he uses a hand to push away the hair on one side, exposing her neck.

She flinches away, and Charlie retracts his hand immediately, apologetic. He has already seen it, though. The skin around her neck is blistered in a red ring: a burn scar, about a year old, by Charlie's reckoning – and he's quite familiar with the healing stages of burns, really.

Her gaze is now planted firmly on her hands, clasped atop her bent knees.

"Katie, what happened?"

Her voice lacks any emotion as she says, "Cursed necklaces are peculiar things. Apparently it doesn't actually matter where you touch it – it always burns your neck."

Charlie shifts a little closer, but not close enough to touch. "Katie…"

Her gaze snaps up, her brown eyes blazing. "I was _used,_ Charlie. He used the Imperious Curse, and he _used_ me." She laughs bitterly. "But I got him back." She grins and it's almost scary. "More than once, I landed a hex on him today."

And that's the fiery Katie that Charlie is used to.

"Who was it, Kates?"

She meets his eyes, her own as icy as her voice. "Malfoy."

Fiery Katie Bell is haunted and vengeful. Charlie cannot help but wonder who else has changed in the time he's been gone. Who else has new scars.


	2. B - Blue (Draco)

So, I've decided to basically disregard timeline (so there's no guarantee these will be chronological anymore) because otherwise I won't ever write any of these.

Alphabet prompt: B - Blue

Also for the As Strong as We Are United Competition, where I used the prompts blue and coffee.

Also for Cheeky's Weekly Drabbles, level: Hard. Prompt: taste; Color: navy blue (not necessarily in so many words); Mood: irritated. Write about one of the seven trio-era Weasley kids.

Trigger warning: mentions of scars from suicide attempts.

.

He sits at the counter in the Leaky Cauldron because he needed to escape the sound of silence for a bit. Charlie has never heard the Burrow so silent before, and he finds the subdued atmosphere unnerving.

He swirls his small glass of something disturbingly blue, watching the liquid sloshing up the sides. The taste is as repulsive as the appearance, and he wonders why he bothered to order anything at all, except for the fact that he always feels strange sitting at a bar without a glass in his hand.

It's not really the questionable liquid currently occupying his thoughts, though. It's the blond sitting to his left, clutching a cup of coffee like it's his lifeline, staring at the counter as though it personally has him irritated. More particularly, it's the left wrist of the blonde clutching the cup of coffee and staring at the counter. Most notably, it's the angry red gash across the pale skin, about an inch-and-a-half below the base of the palm.

The wound — because it's not really old enough for Charlie to call it a scar — cuts straight through the heart of a faintly-etched, scarred skull and snake.

Charlie may have been detached from the war, but not so detached that he doesn't know the Dark Mark when he sees it, faded or not.

The thing is, the gash isn't a suicide wound. Charlie's seen those before, and this isn't one. A suicide scar runs deep, vertical, whereas this mark is shallow, a horizontal line just below the surface of the skin. This is as though the man was attempting to skin himself — and Charlie understands.

The placement and the nature of the cut speak of furious regret. They speak of a man so desperate to forget what he's done that rationality takes a back seat. They speak of a tortured soul, of pain beyond what Charlie can fathom.

Charlie knows that he cannot even begin to imagine being so desperate to forget that his own skin became the enemy. And, because it is and has always been his nature, he cares. He wants to make that pain go away — but he's not a miracle worker, and he knows well enough to live in reality.

His eyes finally land on the face attached to the scarred wrist, and after only a moment of inspection he knows the aristocratic features. It's a face that's been plastered across newspapers for days.

Draco Malfoy.

The man Harry Potter saved from prison with his words.

The man his brothers all hate furiously.

The man so many people hate for what he's done.

Without even thinking, Charlie stands up, puts a hand on the slim shoulder, murmurs, "All scars fade, in time," and then disappears.

Somehow, Charlie knows that the man knows that he isn't just talking about the ones on his skin.


	3. C - Cemetery (Dennis)

For Cheeky's Weekly Drabbles, level Hard: fresh, trust, absolutely no romance.

C - cemetery.

As Strong As We Are United: _loss_

.

Charlie goes to every funeral for every single one of the fallen. He feels like it's the least he can do. He feels like he owes them this, because he gave so little else for the war.

At Colin Creevey's funeral, he watches Dennis Creevey, still just a boy himself, stand up front and speak through his tears about the brother who was his world. Charlie has never met either of them, but it is enough to make him wish he had.

He catches the boy after everyone else leaves, sitting on a bench in the cemetery, overcome by a fresh wave of tears. Maybe it's weird, but Charlie doesn't much care for normal social rules. He sits down next to him. He doesn't say anything, just sits.

After a moment, the boy looks up. "Hello?" His voice is rough, strained.

Charlie smiles slightly. "That was impressive," he says.

Dennis shrugs. "Meretricious."

Charlie raises an eyebrow. "What?"

He sighs. "Showy, but ultimately worthless."

"I don't believe that," Charlie says. "I don't believe that at all." He shakes his head. "You just told the world you weren't going to be beaten. You told them that he mattered, that he is not allowed to be forgotten, that you won't allow his death to be in vain. No, that wasn't worthless."

Dennis looks up at him, and the corner of his mouth curls up just a bit. "You think?"

Charlie nods seriously. He looks at the small scar on Dennis's left hand, the faint, old burn on his upper arm, and the scars all up and down his knees and he sees a boy with a good life and clumsy tendencies. He sees the marks of a kid with too-big feet always running after somebody else, sees a kid physically untouched by the war.

But then he looks at haunted brown eyes and he knows that physical scars aren't the only ones and no one went untouched by this war.

"I should have been there," Dennis says softly, staring at his shoes. "I should have been able to… I don't know, but I should have been there!"

Charlie nods, even though he knows Dennis can't see it. "I know the feeling," he says softly.

Dennis snaps his gaze up. "You? …but you…"

Charlie grimaces wryly. "Yeah. No. I mean, I was there. But I wasn't fast enough. He was already…"

And Charlie will not stop feeling guilty for that. He will not stop regretting losing Fred, because _he wasn't there._

For a very long time, they sit in silence, both just taking a moment to wallow in grief and loss and guilt. Eventually, the sun falls below the horizon and Charlie stands.

"Dennis, if you ever… Name's Charlie Weasley," he says eventually. "If you ever need a word."

And, strangely, Dennis finds he trusts this random stranger who approached him in a cemetery — because Charlie doesn't ask for anything. He just… coexists. And, somehow, that was exactly what Dennis didn't know he needed.


	4. D - Dancing (Luna)

D- dancing

For Cheeky's Weekly Drabbles: Medium — prompt: delicate, write about Luna.

.

She is dancing in the ruins, and he cannot help but stare. Hands above her head, she twirls in circles to a rhythm only she can hear. She looks free, innocent, and oh-so-fragile, and she poses a vivid contrast to the destruction around her.

"Hello, Charlie," she says, her voice a mere breath of air. He startles. He doesn't know her, but she appears to know him.

"Luna," she says softly, and it takes him a moment to realise this is her name. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

She turns to him, and her blue eyes pierce his. Her hands gesture to the rubble around her.

"I'm not sure beautiful is exactly the word," Charlie says. He takes in the cut across the forehead and the blood dried there. He sees the way her entire body is quivering with tremors, the way the skin on her hands is littered with too many too-fresh scars for one so young. He looks at what the war has done to her, and he sees pain, not beauty.

"It is tragedy that shows us true beauty," she murmurs. "It is only when things break that we see what they are made of. It is only in pain that we see what humanity can do."

She steps toward him, takes his hand. The bones in her hand are so fragile, the hand so delicate Charlie feels like it will be crushed in his broad grip — but then she squeezes and there's a strength in it that he hadn't expected.

"Dance with me, Charlie Weasley," she says, and it isn't a question.

And so, in the ruins of the castle that was once his home, he dances with a tiny blonde girl with too-blue eyes and a spirit so innocent it shouldn't be possible for what she's been through.

"We are the phoenix," she says abruptly, her voice still dreamy but sudden. "We will rise again from the ashes."

"Not everything can rise again," Charlie says as he twirls her around, stepping deftly over a stray bit of wall and hoping that he doesn't trip. He thinks of Fred, of Dora, and he says, "Some things are just burnt."

"And the ashes expose how truly resilient humanity is. We will heal. And that is where the beauty is. In the scars, we see our strength."

She stares at him with her sage blue eyes and her delicate, powerful hand disappears in his and she is like nothing he's ever seen before — but there's beauty in that.

And so they dance amidst the devastation.


End file.
